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It's especially ironic that you'd take to the Internet to complain about this.
You're more concerned about government using demographic data to target messaging, than google (or, erm, Dice)? One on these is accountable to voters, and the other is a private business.

reminding people that opening their WiFi is the socially responsible thing to do

No, it is not. This is like saying it's socially responsible to leave your keys in the ignition so your neighbors can barrow your car when they need to run to the store.
It's not socially responsible to suggest that it's OK for people to use Internet connectivity they don't know anything about, like who the man in the middle might be. It's not socially responsible to allow unknown third parties to rile though your personal belongings, like those tax returns you left on that unsecured windows share.

That doesn't destroy the devies themselves. They're still turned on and chattering away looking for a network, at least until the batteries go flat. For most phones with a moderately charged battery, even an iPhone, that could be a day or more.

Even then, there's still records at your cell phone company that can be used to triangulate your last known position to at least tens of feet; usually better.

There is a big difference between seeing drugs on the back seat, or a dead body inside the car, and reporting that, and reporting on drugs found under the carpet in the trunk or in the glovebox if the car was brought in for an oil change...

The mechanic would have had no reasonable need to have searched those two areas to perform the job he was hired to do. Same with a PC tech, if someone brings in a PC to have a CD-ROM drive replaced, there is absolutely NO REASON for the tech to need to search the browser cache or the images directory...

The problem is, because there are different standards of service, what you you've purposed a construction that's beyond what the law and judges can apply equally. Each machanic does different things to the vehicals they're working on and because of that there would be different expectations as to what is private and what is not. A forgotten bag of weed under the seat? Oh, as part of your oil change service, we vacuum the inside carpet. Found a key of coke under the spare? They may have been inspecting it to see if it was still ok; they wouldn't want you to be surprised by a rotten spare on the side of the highway.

Shift this idea to computers. The cache directories are off limits, how about folders on the desktop named DONT_LOOK_HERE? The content of the system desktop backgrounds directory? Which parts of the system are private and which aren't, and how to you apply this equally? This is why you either abandon your expectation of privacy or you don't. If you turn your property over to a third party, you have abandoned any expectation you have in relation to that property.

As for not doing a filesystem search during a cdrom install, if I'm a pc tech, I'm going to run the standard diagnostics on each and every machine that enters my shop for two reasons. First, 90% of the machines I'm going to see are infected with something and I can't ethically allow that machine to leave the store in that state. Second, of that box has a ram problem, I want to know about it before I put a screwdriver to the case. It's not unreasonable to assume that a diagnostic scan is going to alert to a pile of suspiciously named image files in an obscure directory.

The only thing they will respond to is a mass boycott. And considering this is Windows, which is pretty much locked into most large scale networks as it is, not to mention end users' homes, good luck.

It seems to have worked with Vista.

If Microsoft's largest customers (IT departments) reject this version of windows over it's anti-piracy measures just like they rejected last version of windows over it's performance issues, you'll get your wish.

tsj5j writes "On the evening of 9/17/2007, LayeredTech's support system was infiltrated. Upon closer inspection, LayeredTech determined that up to 5000 to 6000 clients could potentially be affected. Till date, LayeredTech has still not publicly confirmed the amount of data retrieved by the hackers. In fact, they have been very publicly unclear about the amount of damage done. LayeredTech is now cautioning all of it's clients to change passwords. Potential data compromised includes : Root/WHM/etc. passwords, Credit Card information, Helpdesk passwords, and any other private information exchanged via the support system. Personally identifiable information as well as email addresses may have been compromised as well. This may cause a blow to LayeredTech's reputation, who has always been a major player in the Dedicated Hosting industry.

The Layered Technologies support database was a target of malicious activity on the evening of 9/17/2007 that may have involved the illegal downloading of information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and server login details for 5 to 6,000 of our clients. Layered Technologies responded immediately to this specific incident by conducting a comprehensive security audit of internal processes and procedures.

more or less:The chips in the new Apple iPhone are made by Intel?No, they're Marvell's. We sold our Xscale architecture to this company. However Apple is one of our best customers for flash memories and our NANDs are featured in the new handheld."

levell writes "The schedule for the OpenMoko Open source, Linux based Neo1973 smart phone was posted to the community mailing list by Sean Moss-Pultz this morning. On Feb 11, free phones will be sent to key community developers and the community websites/wiki/bug tracker will be available. Then on March 11 ("official developer launch") we'll be able to buy an OpenMoko for $350 (+p&p) (worldwide from openmoko.com). After allowing some time for innovative, slick software to be created there will be a "Mass market launch" at which point Sean hopes that "your mom and dad will want one too"."

kad77 (805601) writes "The anonymous coder 'muslix64', who earlier implemented the first public AACS decryption algorithm for use on HD-DVD movies (ed: need slashdot ref) (ed: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119871), has decrypted files from the AACS protected BluRay disc "Lord of War". His methodology was described in another doom9 forum thread (ed: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120869), as a "known-plaintext attack". BluRay's "BD+" enhanced DRM layer was not involved in this decryption, and has not been addressed to date. Ultimately, software content players were the weak point that lead to key discovery."

The choice of which high-definition disc format to use was "kind of made for us, so everything we are replicating right now is in the HD DVD format," said Robby D, a director at popular adult film maker Digital Playground Inc. "As far as I understand, Sony has said to the replicators that if you replicate adult, you'll lose your license."

Many believe that Sony's Betamax video tape format, while technologically superior to VHS, died because the adult movie industry was barred from using Betamax, noted Jake Richter, an analyst at Jon Peddie Research. "Is Sony doomed to repeat one of the mistakes of the past? It seems like that may be the case," he wrote in a report."

htd2 writes "Sun has released the source for Fortress a new highly portable language designed among other things for modern HPC applications. Fortress is designed to make exploiting parallelism as simple as possible while supporting a range of syntax designed to support modern HPC applications. The initial release is of a Fortress interpreter and a subset of the Fortress Language is available from http://fortress.sunsource.net/